


When Castles Fall

by Azar



Series: Playing Pieces [4]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Backstory, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Myth Arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-20
Updated: 2012-08-20
Packaged: 2017-11-12 12:51:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/491224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azar/pseuds/Azar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Realizing his life is coming to an end, the man known as 'X' reflects on the choices he made and the choices made for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Castles Fall

I still remember the moment I first saw him. He was naked except for a wedding band, bathed in the spray of a chemical we'd meant to test on an unsuspecting Baltimore population--a plan foiled by three bumbling clowns and a woman who should never have been allowed to be part of our grand scheme. At that moment, I felt nothing for him but scorn and contempt. 

Three years later, I discovered that same man had become apprenticed to a dear friend of mine, a man who was once among the most ruthless of all of us, but who--like Bill Mulder--had the misfortune of retaining his conscience. A conscience which became his downfall and is soon to become my own. 

At this moment, I don't know whether to damn him or thank him for it. 

I was comfortable in the shadows. I was needed. I was strong. I was a fortress against the weak-willed truth-tellers who did not have the nerve to fight with more than words. And I was secure in my strength. 

I saw her watching me today, his daughter. That young, blonde drone who embodies within her every irony of my friend's life. She was the child for whose sake he deserted the fold, but that same child is the willing sheep of the shepherds whose company he scorned. I saw her watching me, and in her gaze I saw the measure of life left to me. 

When only a girl, she taught us about the game we played even as we taught her, with her gift and love for chess. Each of us she assigned a piece, and I was the castle. One of the strongest pieces on the board, more powerful even than the bishop she dubbed her father, if only by a little. 

It is ironic that another name for my part is the rook, the trickster bird that some Native Americans believed was responsible for carrying the souls of the departed into the afterlife. I have been an angel of death in life, but who will bear my soul away tonight, and where will he carry it to? 

When a castle falls, in life or in chess, it gives the opponent a foothold hard to shake. And I, I fell to a promise. I fell for a friendship, for her father's conscience. Checkmated by the white knight in a corner where my own bishop trapped me. 

Now only hours remain before that same bishop's pawn will take my place, as punishment for my misplaced loyalty to her father. 

A part of me still resents the fall, hates the way my strength was turned to weakness as I too became reluctantly engulfed in the Quixotic quest of my dead friend's protege. 

And yet the part of me that kept returning to his side even in the midst of my anger has no regrets. Perhaps, instead of strength, for once it is the weakness in which I should take pride. For in that weakness, I have accomplished something--perhaps the only thing in my life--that is noble. I suppose I may have retained a bit of my own conscience as well. 

Only two things can bring down a fortress--time or conquest. I have had enough of both. 

Today the last stone will fall. 


End file.
